Japan, Gender, Media, Culture

Let’s Merry!: Buying Mochi Rice

New Year’s in Japan means it’s the season for mochi-gome (餅米), mochi rice, a sticky, glutinous rice. Mochi rice is used for two traditional New Year’s foods: mochi, a smooth rice “cake” made of this mochi cake, and sekihan, sticky rice with azuki beans.

Mochi is traditionally made by pounding the rice with a giant mallet called a kine in a large mortar, usu, carved from a tree trunk. While shrines and neighborhood associations will host festivals for New Year, inviting locals to participate in rice pounding, most household will either use an electric mochi-making machine (sort of like a bread-maker for mochi) or buy mochi premade.

In the basement of Omicho Market, there is a rice store called Fûdo Kanazawa (風土金澤), which sells at least ten kinds of rice, all grown in Ishikawa, in addition to rice products, soy beans, sauces, ice cream, and pickles. I buy my brown rice (genmai, 玄米) from here because I can purchase it by the kilo and I can buy from local farmers. I’m fond of the Kanazawa Daichi brand (金沢大地), which doesn’t use pesticides. The store will polish the rice to your liking on site, or you can just get it as brown rice, unpolished.

Fûdo currently has a display of mochi rice on sale. Last year, I had trouble finding an amount of rice for two people, and so, even after giving half of the mochi rice to a friend, I still have a bag in the freezer, which I use to make okowa. Fûdo sells mochi rice in a variety of sizes ranging from 300 grams to 3 kg, so I got the smallest size they had: 300 grams, 2 servings; I also got some of their locally produced mochi for making zenzai. New year, new rice, new adventures in cooking?